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ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 
AT THE LINCOLN DINNER OF THE 
REPUBLICAN CLUB OF THE CITY OF 
NEW YORK ^? WALDORF-ASTORIA 
HOTEL ^ FEBRUARY 13, 1905 



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WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1905 



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ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 
AT THE LINCOLN DINNER OF THE 
REPUBLICAN CLUB OF THE CITY OF 
NEW YORK ^ WALDORF-ASTORIA 
HOTEL ^' FEBRUARY 13, 1905 



^ 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1905 






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Mr. President, and you, my fellow- 
members OF THE Republican Club, 

AND YOU, MY FELLOW-GUESTS OF THE 
REPUBLICy\N ClUB: 

In his second inaugural, in a speech 
which will be read as long as the memory 
of this nation endures, Abraham Lincoln 
closed by saying: 

" With malice toward none ; with char- 
ity for all; with firmness in the right, as 
God gives us to see the right, let us strive 



2 

on to finish the work we are in ; * * * 
to do all which may achieve and cherish 
a just and lasting peace among ourselves, 
and with all nations." 

Immediately after his reelection he 
had already spoken thus : 

"The strife of the election is but human 
nature practically applied to the facts of 
the case. What has occurred in this case 
must ever recur in similar cases. Human 
nature will not change. In any future 
great national trial, compared with the men 



3 

of this, we shall have as weak and as 

strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as 
good. Let us, therefore, study the inci- 
dents of this as philosophy to learn wis- 
dom from, and none of them as wrongs 
to be revenged. * * * May not all 
having a common interest reunite in a 
common effort to (serve) our common 
country? For my own part, I have striven 
and shall strive to avoid placing any ob- 
stacle in the way. So long as I have been 
here I have not willingly planted a thorn 



4 

in any man's bosom. While I am deeply 

sensible to the high compliment of a re- 
election, and duly grateful, as I trust, to 
Almighty God for having directed my 
countrymen to a right conclusion, as I 
think, for their own good, it adds nothing 
to my satisfaction that any other man may 
be disappointed or pained by the result. 

''May I ask those who have not differed 
with me to join with me in this same spirit 
toward those who have?" 

This is the spirit in which mighty Lin- 



5 

coin sought to bind up the nation's wounds 

when its soul was yet seething with fierce 
hatreds, with wrath, with rancor, with all 
the evil and dreadful passions provoked 
by civil war. Surely this is the spirit 
which all Americans should show noWj 
when there is so little excuse for malice or 
rancor or hatred, when there is so little of 
vital consequence to divide brother from 
brother. [Applause.] 

Lincoln, himself a man of southern 
birth, did not hesitate to appeal to the 



6 

sword when he became satisfied that in no 

other way could the Union be saved, for 
high though he put peace he put righteous- 
ness still higher. [Applause.] He warred 
for the Union; he warred to free the slave; 
and when he warred he warred in earnest, 
for it is a sign of weakness to be half-hearted 
when blows must be struck. [Applause.] 
But he felt only love, a love as deep as the 
tenderness of his great and sad heart, for all 
his countrymen alike in the North and in 
the South, and he longed above everything 



7 

for the day when they should once more 

be knit together in the unbreakable bonds 
of eternal friendship. [Applause.] 

We of to-day, in dealing with all our 
fellow-citizens, white or colored, North or 
South, should strive to show just the quali- 
ties that Lincoln showed : His steadfastness 
in striving after the right, and his infinite 
patience and forbearance with those who 
saw that right less clearly than he did; 
his earnest endeavor to do what was best, 
and yet his readiness to accept the best 

3 



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that was practicable when the ideal best was 

unattainable; his unceasing effort to cure 
what was evil, coupled with his refusal to 
make a bad situation worse by any ill- 
judged or ill-timed effort to make it better. 
The great civil war in which Lincoln 
towered as the loftiest figure left us not 
only a reunited country, but a country 
which has the proud right to claim as its 
own the glory won alike by those who 
wore the blue and by those who wore the 
gray, by those who followed Grant and by 



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those who followed Lee [applause]; for both 

fought with equal bravery and with equal 
sincerity of conviction, each striving for 
the light as it was given him to see the 
light; though it is now clear to all that 
the triumph of the cause of freedom and 
of the Union was essential to the welfare 
of mankind. [Applause.] We are now 
one people, a people with failings which 
we must not blink, but a people with great 
qualities in which we have the right to 
feel just pride. 



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All good Americans who dwell in the 
North must, because they are good Amer- 
icans, feel the most earnest friendship for 
their fellow-countrymen who dwell in the 
South, a friendship all the greater because 
it is in the South that we find in its most 
acute phase one of the gravest problems 
before our people: the problem of so 
dealing with the man of one color as to 
secure him the rights that no one would 
grudge him if he were of another color. 
[Applause.] To solve this problem it is, 



II 

of course, necessary to educate him to 

perform the duties, a failure to perform 
which will render him a curse to himself 
and to all around him. 

Most certainly all clear-sighted and 
generous men in the North appreciate the 
difficulty and perplexity of this problem, 
sympathize with the South in the embar- 
rassment of conditions for which she is not 
alone responsible, feel an honest wish to 
help her where help is practicable, and 
have the heartiest respect for those brave 

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and earnest men of the South who, in the 
face of fearful difficulties, are doing all 
that men can do for the betterment alike 
of white and of black. The attitude of 
the North toward the negro is far from 
what it should be and there is need that 
the North also should act in good faith 
upon the principle of giving to each man 
what is justly due him, of treating him on 
his worth as a man, granting him no 
special favors, but denying him no proper 
opportunity for labor and the reward 



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of labor. [Applause.] But the peculiar 

circumstances of the South render the 
problem there far greater and far more 
acute. 

Neither I nor any other man can say- 
that any given way of approaching that 
problem will present in our time even an 
approximately perfect solution, but we can 
safely say that there can never be such 
solution at all unless we approach it with 
the effort to do fair and equal justice among 
all men ; and to demand from them in re- 



14 

turn just and fair treatment for others. 

Our effort should be to secure to each man, 
whatever his color, equality of opportunity, 
equality of treatment before the law. As 
a people striving to shape our actions in 
accordance with the great law of righteous- 
ness we can not afford to take part in or 
be indifferent to the oppression or mal- 
treatment of any man who, against crush- 
ing disadvantages, has by his own indus- 
try, energy, self-respect, and perseverance 
struggled upward to a position which 



15 

would entitle him to the respect of his 

fellows, if only his skin were of a different 
hue. [Applause.] 

Every generous impulse in us revolts 
at the thought of thrusting down instead 
of helping up such a man. To deny any 
man the fair treatment granted to others 
no better than he is to commit a wrong 



upo 



n him — a wron^r sure to react in the 



'fc) 



long run upon those guilty of such denial. 
The only safe principle upon ^vhich Amer- 
icans can act is that of "all men up," not 

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that of "some men down." [Applause.] 

If in any community the level of intelli- 
gence, morality, and thrift among the 
colored men can be raised, it is, humanly 
speaking, sure that the same level among 
the whites will be raised to an even higher 
degree; and it is no less sure that the 
debasement of the blacks will in the end 
carry with it an attendant debasement of 
the whites. [Applause.] 

The problem is so to adjust the rela- 
tions between two races of different ethnic 



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type that the rights of neither be abridged 

nor jeoparded; that the backward race 
be trained so that it may enter into the 
possession of true freedom, while the 
forward race is enabled to preserve un- 
harmed the high civilization wrought out 
by its forefathers. The working out of 
this problem must necessarily be slow; 
it is not possible in offhand fashion to 
obtain or to confer the priceless boons of 
freedom, industrial efficiency, political 
capacity, and domestic morality. Nor is 



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it only necessary to train the colored man ; 

it is quite as necessary to train the white 
man, for on his shoulders rests a well- 
nigh unparalleled sociological responsi- 
bility. It is a problem demanding the 
best thought, the utmost patience, the 
most earnest effort, the broadest charity, 
of the statesman, the student, the philan- 
thropist; of the leaders of thought in 
every department of our national life. 
The church can be a most important 
factor in solving it aright. But above all 



19 

else we need for its successful solution 

the sober, kindly, steadfast, unselfish per- 
formance of duty by the average plain 
citizen in his everyday dealings with his 
fellows. [Applause.] 

The ideal of elemental justice meted 
out to every man is the ideal we should 
keep ever before us. It will be many 
a long day before we attain to it, and 
unless we show not only devotion to it, 
but also wisdom and self-restraint in the 
exhibition of that devotion, we shall defer 



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the time for its realization still further. 
In striving to attain to so much of it as 
concerns dealing with men of different 
colors, we must remember two things. 

In the first place, it is true of the col- 
ored man, as it is true of the white man, 
that in the long run his fate must depend 
far more upon his own effort than upon the 
efforts of any outside friend. [Applause.] 
Every vicious, venal, or ignorant colored 
man is an even greater foe to his own 
race than to the community as a whole. 



21 

[Applause.] The colored man's self- 
respect entitles him to do that share in the 
political work of the country which is 
warranted by his individual ability and 
integrity and the position he has won for 
himself. But the prime requisite of the 
race is moral and industrial uplifting. 

Laziness and shiftlessness, these, and 
above all, vice and criminality of every 
kind, are evils more potent for harm to 
the black race than all acts of oppression 
of white men put together. The colored 



22 

man who fails to condemn crime in another 
colored man, who fails to cooperate in all 
lawful ways in bringing colored criminals 
to justice, is the worst enemy of his own 
people, as well as an enemy to all the 
people. Law-abiding black men should, 
for the sake of their race, be foremost in 
relentless and unceasing warfare against 
law-breaking black men. If the standards 
of private morality and industrial efficiency 
can be raised high enough among the 
black race, then its future on this conti- 



23 

nent is secure. The stability and purity 
of the home is vital to the welfare of the 
black race, as it is to the welfare of every 
race. 

In the next place the white man, who, 
if only he is willing, can help the colored 
man more than all other white men put 
together, is the white man who is his neigh- 
bor. North or South. Each of us must do 
his whole duty without flinching, and if 
that duty is national it must be done in 
accordance with the principles above laid 



24 

down. But in endeavoring each to be his 
brother's keeper it is wise to remember 
that each can normally do most for the 
brother who is his immediate neighbor. 
If we are sincere friends of the negro let 
us each in his own locality show it by his 
action therein, and let us each show it also 
by upholding the hands of the white man, 
in whatever locality, who is striving to do 
justice to the poor and the helpless, to be 
a shield to those whose need for such a 
shield is great. 



25 

The heartiest acknowledgments are 
due to the ministers, the judges and law 
officers, the grand juries, the public men, 
and the great daily newspapers in the 
South, who have recently done such effec- 
tive work in leading the crusade against 
lynching in the South ; and I am glad to 
say that during the last three months the 
returns, as far as they can be gathered, 
show a smaller number of lynchings than 
for any other three months during the last 
twenty years. Let us uphold in every 



26 

way the hands of the men who have led 
in this work, who are striving to do all 
their work in this spirit. I am about to 
quote from the address of the Right Rev- 
erend Robert Strange, Bishop Coadjutor 
of North Carolina, as given in the South- 
ern Churchman of October 8, 1904: 

The Bishop first enters an emphatic 
plea against any social intermingling of 
the races; a question which must, of 
course, be left to the people of each com- 
munity to settle for themselves, as in 



27 

such a matter no one community — and 
indeed no one individual — can dictate to 
any other; always provided that in each 
locality men keep in mind the fact 
that there must be no confusing of 
civil privileges with social intercourse. 
[Applause.] Civil law can not regulate 
social practices. Society, as such, is a law 
unto itself, and will always regulate its own 
practices and habits. Full recognition of 
the fundamental fact that all men should 
stand on an equal footing, as regards civil 



28 

privileges, in no way interferes with recog- 
nition of the further fact that all reflecting 
men of both races are united in feeling 
that race purity must be maintained. 
The Bishop continues: 

"What should the white men of the 
South do for the negro? They must give 
him a free hand, a fair field, and a cordial 
godspeed, the two races working together 
for their mutual benefit and for the de- 
velopment of our common country. He 
must have liberty, equal opportunity to 



29 

make his living, to earn his bread, to 
build his home. He must have justice, 
equal rights, and protection before the law. 
He must have the same political privi- 
leges; the suffrage should be based on 
character and intelligence for white and 
black alike. He must have the same 
public advantages of education; the pub- 
lic schools are for all the people, what- 
ever their color or condition. The white 
men of the South should give hearty and 
respectful consideration to the exceptional 



30 
men of the negro race, to those who have 

the character, the ability and the desire to 
be lawyers, physicians, teachers, preach- 
ers, leaders of thought and conduct 
amons: their own men and women. We 
should give them cheer and opportunity 
to gratify every laudable ambition, and to 
seek every innocent satisfaction among 
their own people. Finally, the best white 
men of the South should have frequent 
conferences with the best colored men, 
where, in frank, earnest, and sympathetic 



31 

discussion they might understand each 

other better, smooth difficulties, and so 
guide and encourage the weaker race." 

Surely we can all of us join in express- 
ing our substantial agreement with the 
principles thus laid down by this North 
Carolina bishop, this representative of the 
Christian thought of the South. [Applause.] 

I am speaking on the occasion of the 
celebration of the birthday of Abraham 
Lincoln, and to men who count it their 
peculiar privilege that they have the right 



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to hold Lincoln's memory dear, and the 
duty to strive to work along the lines that 
he laid down. We can pay most fitting 
homage to his memory by doing the 
tasks allotted to us in the spirit in which 
he did the infinitely greater and more 
terrible tasks allotted to him. 

Let us be steadfast for the right; but 
let us err on the side of generosity rather 
than on the side of vindictiveness toward 
those who differ from us as to the method 
of attaining the right. Let us never for- 



33 

get our duty to help in uplifting the lowly, 

to shield from wrong the humble; and let 
us likewise act in a spirit of the broadest 
and frankest generosity toward all our 
brothers, all our fellow-countrymen; in a 
spirit proceeding not from weakness but 
from strength, a spirit which takes no more 
account of locality than it does of class or 
of creed ; a spirit which is resolutely bent 
on seeing that the Union which Washing- 
ton founded and which Lincoln saved 
from destruction shall grow nobler and 



34 

greater throughout the ages. [Cheers 

and applause.] 

I believe in this country with all my 
heart and soul. I believe that our peo- 
ple will in the end rise level to every 
need, will in the end triumph over every 
difficulty that rises before them. I could 
not have such confident faith in the des- 
tiny of this mighty people if I had it 
merely as regards one portion of that 
people. [Applause.] Throughout our 
land things on the whole have grown 



35 

better and not worse, and this is as true of 

one part of the country as it is of another. 
I believe in the southerner as I believe in 
the northerner. I claim the right to feel 
pride in his great qualities and in his great 
deeds exactly as I feel pride in the great 
qualities and deeds of every other Amer- 
ican. [Applause.] For weal or for woe 
we are knit together, and we shall go up 
or go down together; and I believe that 
we shall go up and not down, that we shall 
go forward instead of halting and falling 



36 

back, because I have an abiding faith in 

the generosity, the courage, the resolution, 
and the common sense of all my coun- 
trymen. [Applause. J 

The Southern States face difficult 
problems ; and so do the Northern States. 
Some of the problems are the same for 
the entire country. Others exist in 
greater intensity in one section; and yet 
others exist in greater intensity in an- 
other section. But in the end they will all 
be solved ; for fundamentally our people 



V 



37 

are the same throughout this land ; the 

same in the qualities of heart and brain 
and hand which have made this Republic 
what it is in the great to-day; which will 
make it what it is to be in the infinitely 
greater to-morrow. [Applause.] I admire 
and respect and believe in and have faith 
in the men and women of the South as I 
admire and respect and believe in and 
have faith in the men and women of 
the North. All of us alike, Northerners 
and Southerners, Easterners and West- 



38 

erners, can best prove our fealty to the 

Nation's past by the way in which we do 
the Nation's work in the present; for only 
thus can we be sure that our children's 
children shall inherit Abraham Lincoln's 
single-hearted devotion to the great un- 
changing creed that "righteousness exalt- 
eth a nation." [Cheers and applause.] 



